Multicolored lines#

This example shows how to make a multi-colored line. In this example, the line is colored based on its derivative.

multicolored line
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.collections import LineCollection
from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap, BoundaryNorm

x = np.linspace(0, 3 * np.pi, 500)
y = np.sin(x)
dydx = np.cos(0.5 * (x[:-1] + x[1:]))  # first derivative

# Create a set of line segments so that we can color them individually
# This creates the points as a N x 1 x 2 array so that we can stack points
# together easily to get the segments. The segments array for line collection
# needs to be (numlines) x (points per line) x 2 (for x and y)
points = np.array([x, y]).T.reshape(-1, 1, 2)
segments = np.concatenate([points[:-1], points[1:]], axis=1)

fig, axs = plt.subplots(2, 1, sharex=True, sharey=True)

# Create a continuous norm to map from data points to colors
norm = plt.Normalize(dydx.min(), dydx.max())
lc = LineCollection(segments, cmap='viridis', norm=norm)
# Set the values used for colormapping
lc.set_array(dydx)
lc.set_linewidth(2)
line = axs[0].add_collection(lc)
fig.colorbar(line, ax=axs[0])

# Use a boundary norm instead
cmap = ListedColormap(['r', 'g', 'b'])
norm = BoundaryNorm([-1, -0.5, 0.5, 1], cmap.N)
lc = LineCollection(segments, cmap=cmap, norm=norm)
lc.set_array(dydx)
lc.set_linewidth(2)
line = axs[1].add_collection(lc)
fig.colorbar(line, ax=axs[1])

axs[0].set_xlim(x.min(), x.max())
axs[0].set_ylim(-1.1, 1.1)
plt.show()

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